Kitchen Organization with Yaling Hou of Flowie
Posted on January 6th, 2009 by ali // 2 Comments »
Yaling Hou is the designer and the founder of the lifestyle design company, Flowie. Launched in 2007, Flowie designs and manufactures refreshing fabrics, bags, home accessories and other fashion accessories. Yaling Hou was born and raised in Taiwan. She currently lives in Redwood City, California, with her Japanese husband and their adorable Maltese dog.
Because both my husband and I love cooking and entertaining, we have many dishes and cookwares. We recently moved into our new home and have been discussing and working on how we should organize our kitchen so that it suits our needs. Here are some tips we have learned during the process:
* cabinet shelves: www.containerstore.com / utensil tray: www.bedbathandbeyond.com
1. Use organization accessories
Cabinet organizing shelves are great tools to organize your dishes and cooking pans. Shelves maximize storage space in cabinets and also keep dishes and pans within easy reach. Drawer utensil trays help keep cooking tools and utensils organized and easy to find. Be sure to sort your dishes by types (e.g., shapes) and frequency of usage. We put our daily dishes in the lowest shelf for easy access.
* CD stackers: www.containerstore.com / Vase: designpublic.com
2. Be creative with organizers
Kitchen organizers do not need to be kitchen items. Sometimes, items that are not meant for the kitchen can be useful. For example, we found CD stackers useful for storing and organizing fruits and produce on the counter top. They keep our kitchen counter top free from clutters. And, a decorative vase works beautifully as an alternative utensil holder. I love the recycled wine bottle vase that I use to hold our cooking utensils. It looks so pretty on our counter top.
* shelves: IKEA / pot rack: IKEA
3. Make use of vertical space
We have no space for a pot rack in our kitchen. As a solution, we installed small wall shelves to hold small pots and a tea kettle. We also installed a hook on the side of the cabinet to hang our big wok. To store cooking pan covers, we installed a cover rack behind the cabinet door. Make use of every inch!
Filed in DP Designer Posts, Get Organized, Organization Blog Fest | 2 Comments
January 7th, 2009 at 12:27 am (#)
These are incredible organizational ideas! Why didn’t I think of this? I have been on a mission to get my house de-junked and organized by the end of March. I think it was Stephanie Bennett Vogt’s book, “Your Spacious Self” that got me so excited to get going on this project- I get a boost of “cleaning energy” every time I open this book. I am definitely going to take a few of your organizational ideas and implement them into my plan as well. Thank you for the great tips!
January 7th, 2009 at 10:28 am (#)
You have some very slick ideas for kitchens. That has been one of the recurring themes in my own life–looking for a way to make our bathrooms and our kitchen look really glorious, even though those rooms are much too small. One of the glories of the Internet, though, is there is absolutely no dearth of ideas. I have been looking for ones that seem to me to make sense and posting my results. Right now I have no idea of what I will ultimately do, but I keep hoping I will come up with something really slick.